The state would pay 21 victims of the deadly 2012 Lower North Fork fire $11.4 million if the legislature accepts a recommendation of the Colorado State Claims Board.

The amount is less than the $17 million plus interest that a Judicial Arbiter Group, made up of retired judges, recommended the board suggest to legislators and it drew scorn from victims’ lawyers.

“How this board got to these figures is pure imagination,” said lawyer William Finger, who called board’s recommendation a “travesty.”

Thomas Henderson, whose clients include Scott Appel, whose wife died in the blaze, and Samuel Lucas and his sister, who lost their parents, said the state has thrown up hurdle after hurdle to their quest for compensation.

Board chairman Attorney General John Suthers called the comments unfair and said delays were caused by the actions of victims’ “hyper-aggressive lawyers.”

He pointed to a legal battle in Jefferson County District Court that ended in February when a judge threw out claims that included allegations that the state took the victims’ land without paying them.

Appel, who spoke to media after the board announced its recommendations at a meeting Tuesday, said he and his wife Ann had worked hard and saved money. “We were headed for retirement” when the fire broke out, he said.

They owned 13 pieces of land in the area and the fire claimed their home and other structures when it scorched eight of the properties, he said.

The arbiter group recommended he be paid $436,000 for the loss of his wife, and another $176,000 for other non-economic losses in addition to economic damages.

The board’s recommendation only compensates him for $3.1 million in economic damages.

The arbiters recommended that Lucas receive more than $800,000 for the loss of his parents. The board will recommend he receive $408,000 for economic losses.

Suthers said the board will also recommend that if other victims agree, legislators award $600,000 now being held for victims to those who lost family.

Suthers told victims of the fire that if they agree to accept the amount the claims board recommends to legislators, they would have to waive any additional claims against the state, said Thomas Henderson, a lawyer for a handful of the 21 claimants.

Suthers said according to statute, the claims board is prohibited from recommending payment of non-economic damages to the legislature.

The board wants to get the recommendations to the General Assembly during the budget-making process now underway, Suthers said. Victims can wait to decide if they are willing to take what is offered, but if they do the legislature may not take the matter up until next year, Suthers said.

The victims can challenge the board’s recommendations in court, but had not decided whether they would do that on Tuesday.

The claims board will meet again on Wednesday to decide on claims of five other victims.

A general assignment reporter for The Denver Post, Tom McGhee has covered business, police, courts, higher education and breaking news. He came to The Post from Albuquerque, N.M., where he worked for a year and a half covering utilities. He began his journalism career in New York City, worked for a pair of community weeklies that covered the west side of Manhattan from 14th Street to 125th Street.

You know it’s cold when Mickey won’t ice skate with kids, or when Russian ballerinas have bus trouble. Even some criminals took the day off when Denver’s temperature plunged to minus-10 early Thursday.